Logistics

  • Wifi: CSS_Summer_School/Password: Summer2023
  • This morning:
    • Introduction: What are CSS?
    • Presentation/Schedule/More Logistics!

Logistics

MANY THANKS TO


  • My co-organizers: Felix Lennert, Julien Boelaert, Yacine Chitour, Gaston Vermersch.

  • Our interns team: Anthonin Izoret, Solene Moro, Olivier Pinatel, Marie-Amélie Ruiz-Dormet

  • The CREST and its administrative team (Teddy, Leyla, Fanda, Alexandra, Tristan, Eliane, Nawal, Lyza…)

  • For material support The SICSS team, the SSRC, HI! Paris, ECODEC, French taxpayers.

What are Computational Social Sciences?

Computational Social Sciences

  • Harnessing the power of computers to carry out (social) scientific research
  • An interdisciplinary endeavor
  • A set of methods more than a field

Computational Social Sciences





- Computers? Nothing new!
- (Kashyap, 2021): “Demography has long used computer data”


- But since the 2000s, two changes:
+ Data abundance
+ Computer power

What are Computational Social Sciences?

  • The same remark holds true in many disciplines: the combination of more data and more power did create massive opportunities for research.
  • CSS are trying to make the most of this new social & technical configuration.

Doing Research in the Big Data Era

Is more data better? Polarized views

Doing Research in the Big Data Era

Is more data better? Polarized views

A Threefold Promise

  • Empirical
    • Investigating old questions anew
    • Asking new questions

A Threefold Promise

  • Empirical
    • Ex. Studying couple formation in the 21st century

A Threefold Promise

  • Empirical
    • Ex. Studying couple formation in the 21st century

A Threefold Promise

  • Methodological
    • A Classic Distinction: Sample, and Population

    • But what if you could collect all data in the time it takes to collect a sample?

    • If your data is digitized, well-organized, this could be possible

A Threefold Promise

  • Methodological
    • Ex. A study on interdisciplinarity in Economics
      • Idea: Looking at citations
      • Data: 5 journals, over a century
        • 24,500 articles
        • 600,000 references



in Fourcade, Ollion & Algan, “The Superiority of Economists,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2015.

A Threefold Promise

  • Theoretical

A Threefold Promise BUT

  • Empirical
  • A Threefold Promise

    • Methodological

      N = All, a rather rare case

    A Threefold Promise

  • Theoretical
    • Promises are still in the waiting

    • The lessons of the history of science need to be heeded

      • “Social physics”?
      • Does more data lead to more “theory”?
  • Making the Most of these Opportunities

    • Collecting data
      • Ex. Medical density / localization in a given town

    Making the Most of these Opportunities

    • Collecting data
      • Ex. Medical density / localization in a given town

    Making the Most of these Opportunities

    • Collecting data
      • Ex. Medical density / localization in a given town

    Making the Most of these Opportunities

    • Collecting data sometimes in real time
      • Nowcasting

        Cavallo and Rigobon, State Street’s Price series (2012)

    Making the Most of these Opportunities

    • Collecting data sometimes in real time
      • Merging data

    Making the Most of these Opportunities

    • Collecting data sometimes in real time
      • Producing data: Experiments

    Making the Most of these Opportunities

    • Collecting data sometimes in real time
      • Producing data: mass collaboration

    Making the Most of these Opportunities

    • Collecting data sometimes in real time
      • Producing data: artificial intelligence

        Do, Shen & Ollion, « The Augmented Social Scientist »
        Using AI to extract sentence-levels forms of narration in politics

    Conclusion